Giants' hopes disappearing into thin air

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, July 16, 1996

DENVER - Mark Leiter has given up more home runs (22) than any pitcher in the National League, and he's starting for the Giants Tuesday night in the mile-high air of Coors Field. If that prospect made him restive, he didn't show it.

"People are making a big deal about it. I know the ball carries here. But I won't worry about it," Leiter said before the Giants opened the series Monday night with a 7-3 loss to Colorado. "If I give up home runs, I give up home runs. I've been giving them up everywhere else."

That quote shouldn't be taken as nonchalance. Leiter (4-8) cares plenty. But he's in the midst of a terrible slump and said he can't fret over such things as the 88 homers the Rockies have hit at home this year, or the altitude's minimizing effect on breaking balls, or his personal stats.

"For me, the way things are going, I don't think about wins, losses, ERA. I'm just trying to pitch seven, eight innings and see what happens," Leiter said.

Curiously, the Giants' slump reached 4-18 in a game that featured no home runs, the first game at Coors Field without one since April 27.

The Giants took a 3-0 lead off Rockies right-hander Roger Bailey on a couple of RBI singles by Matt Williams and a triple by Marvin Benard. But the Rockies fired back against Giants rookie Steven Bourgeois with a seven-run, seven-hit third inning that ended the pitching staff's 23-inning scoreless streak in an explosive way.

Bourgeois, like Bailey making his second start of the year, actually pitched shutout ball in the two innings before the third and in the three innings after. But he made a double-header's worth of mistakes in the big inning, the worst of which was a fastball that Bailey, an .083-hitting pitcher, ripped into left-center field for a three-run triple.

"A 3-0 lead ain't that much in this ballpark," manager Dusty Baker said. "But the key is when you get a lead here you can't walk guys."

That's what Bourgeois did, putting No. 8 hitter Quentin McCracken on board to load the bases ahead of Bailey with two out as a light rain fell.

Benard was shading the pitcher to right-center, but Bailey hit the ball the other way. Benard took a gamble and tried to catch the ball instead of circling behind it to take it on a hop. He didn't get there and the ball went past him to the wall, scoring Andres Galarraga, Jeff Reed and McCracken for a 6-3 Rockies lead.

"The way it looked, if I went back on it, the grass was wet and it would have skidded and still gone behind me," Benard said. "It's one of those things where you take a chance and it comes up wrong."

Bourgeois made other mistakes in the inning: letting Dante Bichette take a charitable lead at first and allowing him to steal a key base, and throwing a wild pitch that scored a run and moved another runner to third.

A 7-3 deficit in the third inning is not insurmountable at Coors Field, unless the opposing pitcher slams the door like Bailey did. He allowed just one hit after the second inning, until he was removed in the eighth, and the Giants had just five hits overall - a paltry sum here.

Although the Rockies tied a major-league record by scoring at least seven runs in their 11th straight home game, they weren't able to go deep. Leiter hopes to make it two games in a row without a Rockies homer as he battles the elements.

"You just try not to change anything," Leiter said.

"I've seen the success that Kevin Ritz (11-5) has had, so he adapted. If you pitch your normal game, and the other guy pitches his normal game, somebody's going to win, 8-7 or 15-13." &lt;